Quote: (Relating to his striptease at a party at age 81 "We had a few drinks one night; I guess I had some moves. I wasn't aware of it til the next morning - I had 12 one-dollar bills stuffed in my undershorts."

Trademark greeting: Yeehaa!

Success can be measured in many ways: years lived, money made, places visited. For Black George Simmons, it's all about the root beer floats. Several sheets of paper - documenting each of the nine years he's spent at Grand Teton National Park's White Grass Ranger Station - are affixed to the wall of the 84-year-old volunteer ranger's log cabin, displaying all the pertinent information, including the number of floats given away. "You guys will be 464 and 465 for this year," says the hobbit-like man. "That's not my record. One year I had 576."

Simmons' rustic log cabin has no running water. But a lot of hikers, patrolling rangers, and Park Service trail and fire crews are grateful that it has electricity: His freezer is filled with half-gallon containers of vanilla ice cream, and his fridge has little space left over for food, what with all the two-liter bottles of root beer.

Simmons can't recall why he started giving away free root beer floats, but says the thank-yous he gets from people all over the world make it well worthwhile. "It's the best investment I ever made, 'cause people just love it," he says.

And that seems to be all Simmons needs to keep doing what he does. He is a jowly and jovial guy, rather like Santa's mountain-man brother. Just 50 yards from the park's Death Canyon trailhead, his little cabin welcomes visitors: a spartan room with a rumpled bed, a woodstove, a computer, and, mounted on the wall, the kicking cowboy from Wyoming's license plates proclaiming, "Yeehaa."

As a geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, Simmons traveled the world, mapping rivers in Liberia and living in Saudi Arabia and Brazil. After retiring in 1981, he began working as a volunteer for the Forest Service and Park Service. His personality proved to be magnetic. That's when, he says, he realized he was part of something much, much bigger.

"The man with the beard started attracting people," he says. "I realized that I had a mission, that I gave people hope. They don't have to declare an allegiance to a church, all they have to do is just see: see an 84-year-old man living out here, having one hell of a blast of a time, and having fun and doing people good at the same time."

Simmons is an old-fashioned yarn-spinner, the type found in movies but rarely glimpsed in real life. When asked about his name, he shakes his head.

"I was afraid you were gonna ask that," he says, sighing theatrically. He lowers his voice, explaining that the name equates with darkness. He speaks of playing piano in a bordello at age 15, and of a striptease in Houston's Golden Age Widow's Club at age 64 - a story that involves the Heimlich maneuver somehow gone awry.

But the West isn't as wild as it once was. Simmons tells of three female hikers who recently got locked out of their car.

"They've got a cell phone and Triple A, and there's no way I can get involved," he moans. "That's the penalty of progress. It was better in the old days, when they had to depend on the old ranger to come."

Outside the cabin, Simmons points out the purple thistles growing tall alongside the creek, calling them the prettiest flowers he's had all summer. The park's eradication plans failed to remove the weed, he says, and now he associates thistles with symbols of durability such as the cockroach and the coyote.

"I'm trying to. But it's not like I really try. It just seems to come without my doing anything. So it's not like having a job," he says, spitting out the word as if it were a profanity. "If there's anything I don't want, it's a job."

More from Communities

All I can say ... or need to say is, "Good on
you, Black George Simmons!"

lonztash

Oct 08, 2007 02:45 AM

We love Black George, hes been touching
hearts (and ancles) ever since he set foot on this land.
what a great man! I had the chance to work with him in Canyonlands
National Park in south eastern Utah a few summers ago and
he was one of the highlights of my journey. He was definatly one of
the nicest, friendliest and most heart warming people i've
ever met. we still keep intouch and I am constantly amazed at his
journeys and how he continues to spead smiles through out the park
system!

Lani Edghill

avid
reader and HCN supporter

Anonymous

Nov 28, 2007 04:33 PM

YEEEEE HAAAA! Black George you are our
hero!!

---melanie, another fan, of Black George, Canyonlands, the Dolores
River Brewerey, and the continent of Africa

:)

Anonymous

Nov 28, 2007 06:37 PM

A great portrait of a river-rat I first met in 1967 when five of us
spent three weeks traversing the Colorado River thru the Grand
Canyon. We were never lost as Black George could always give us a
fix from the USGS maps as to exactly where we were. His recitations
of Robert Service around the camp fire at night was simply amazing.
We were privileged to help, along with many of his friends, to
celebrate his 80th birthday in Moab. He seemed somewhat infatuated
with all those young ladies' ankles! Congratulations
& best wishes! Dee & David

Anonymous

Feb 22, 2008 02:47 PM

We met Black George on a hiking trip up the canyon in
the Teton National Park, about 6 years ago...and, god, what a
character! We still talk about him today; what a nice man, what a
life he has lived, how tiny his little cabin was...and no
plumbing?!!! His story really ought to be featured as a slice of
Americana...a true character with a fascinating life! It was our
pleasure to have met you George!